An American Lawyer Weighs In As Wikileaks Renew Dr. Aafia Siddiqui Mystery

11 December 2010

By El-Hajj Mauri' Saalakhan

Assalaamu Alaikum (Greetings of Peace): We begin with
an important notice from the Family of Dr. Aafia
Siddiqui.

To Supporters of Dr. Aafia:

This is to inform supporters that MLFA [Muslim Legal
Fund of America] will no longer be involved with
funding for Dr. Aafia's case, and any monies donated
to them will not go towards any aspect of Dr. Aafia's
case.

The family have requested that MLFA kindly cease to
use Dr. Aafia's case, her name, statements or any
statement from family members for their fund raising
activities in order to avoid confusion among potential
donors.

86-year prison term for Dr. Siddiqui: Victory in
Courtroom is Loss on Worldwide Public Stage

This website has maintained an ongoing interest in the
bizarre case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui (hereand here). We
have stated we do not know if the Pakistani native is
a brilliant neuroscientist or an al Qaeda terrorist as
our Government has repeatedly charged she is. What we
do know is that our Government has cloaked the
Siddiqui case in such mystery and secrecy that we
believe she was most likely kidnapped, along with her
three children, by Pakistan's infamous intelligence
agency in Karachi in 2003 and turned over to our
Government who placed her in secret detention in
Bagram military prison in Afghanistan where she was
subjected to torture and other forms of debilitating
abuse.

Just months after U.S. District Court Judge Richard M.
Berman, sitting in the Southern District of New York,
imposed an 86-year prison term on Dr. Siddiqui
following her conviction for shooting American
military personnel after her detention in Ghanzi,
Afghanistan in July 2008, the highly publicized and
controversial WikiLeaks disclosures of U.S. State
Department classified cables has reawaken what the
British newspaper, The Guardian, calls "one of the
most vexed mysteries of the Bush-era ‘war on terror'."

One cable from the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad,
Pakistan, dated July 31, 2008 (two weeks after
Siddiqui's capture in Afghanistan), stated: "Bagram
officials have assured us that they have not been
holding Siddiqui for the last four years, as has been
alleged." Earlier cables from the embassy in February
addressed the widespread public protest and outrage in
Pakistan following Siddiqui's conviction in February
2010. At that time U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson
charged the protests were the result of "one-sided"
media coverage in Pakistan about the case.

The mystery surrounding Dr. Siddiqui's strange
disappearance from Karachi in 2003 assumed an
international life form in 2008 when, according to the
Peace thru Justice Foundation, four men escaped from
the Bagram prison and began to share stories about a
Pakistani woman known as "Prisoner 650" who had been
repeatedly subjected to torture and physical abuse at
the hands of U.S. Government and military personnel.
After a British citizen named Binyan Mohamed was
released from U.S. secret detention, he positively
identified a photograph of Dr. Siddiqui as "Prisoner
650." The Prisoner 650/Dr. Siddiqui story was picked
up by British journalist Yvonne Ridley who coined her
as the "Gray Lady of Bagram." The "Gray Lady" term was
employed because Ridley said "Prisoner 650" appeared
to be a "ghost" by all those who saw her and heard her
screams echoing following torture sessions at the
infamous Bagram prison.

During Dr. Siddiqui's trial last February, the
Government went to great lengths to keep the five
years she disappeared from the face of the earth "off
limits" to the jury that convicted her. Why? Because
the Government, we believe, is hiding secrets about
what it did to Dr. Siddiqui during those five years.
Tragically, whether or not Dr. Siddiqui was ever
actually in Bagram prison and tortured there is no
longer the real issue. The issue now is that the world
believes she was, especially the people of Pakistan.
Perception is often more powerful than reality.

Should we be concerned about what the people of
Pakistan think about the United States? Yes, as long
as we are sending billions of dollars in military and
economic aid to the country to secure their assistance
in our so-called "war on terror," we must have good
relations with its people. The WikiLeaks cables
themselves reflect that far beyond the Dr. Siddiqui
case our relationship with the Pakistani government,
particularly its intelligence and military branches,
is strained to say the least. The Dr. Siddiqui affair
is, and will remain, a sticky-wicket in trying to work
through these tense political and military
relationships.

The American public will never know all the immoral,
unethical and illegal things our Government did during
the Bush-era "war on terror." The outrageous tragedy
about this so-called war-on-terror declared by former
President George W. Bush in the wake of the horrible
9/11 Twin Tower attacks is that it has cost us more,
both in human lives and economic loss, than any terror
attack the war was designed to present would have cost
us. In Iraq alone, we have incurred 4,429 deaths and
32,937 wounded or seriously injured while another
320,000 of our returning troops suffer from some form
of psychological trauma and an average of 18 are
committing suicide each day in this country. In
Afghanistan, we have incurred 1,415 deaths and 2,309
wounded or seriously injured, and the number are
increasing daily. The total costs of these two
wars—most of which was waged "on credit" during the
Bush years—to American taxpayers is nearly $1.2
trillion.

The earliest possible withdrawal date from Afghanistan
has now been set for 2014 with some military experts
saying it may be another ten years before we see a
complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from that
incorrigible country. All U.S. forces are scheduled to
be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2011. In the
meantime we will continue to experience more human
casualties and irreparable damage to our national
economy and democratic reputation as we wage the
so-called "war on terror." The costs of funding these
wars, both on the battlefield and in the human damage
they inflict on our military personnel, will increase
exponentially and remain a fiscal drain on our
economy. And just to put this issue into a clearer
perspective, the House Veterans Affairs Committee was
recently informed by prominent economists that the
lifetime medical care and benefits for troops
returning from these two wars who were disabled by
their service will costs taxpayers another $1.3
trillion.

And what is the end result of these staggering costs
to human lives and our economic well-being: the United
States has become an international boogeyman
attracting more "terrorists" who are willing to harm
and attack the United States than there were in 2001.
The terrorists have won the war—if not on the
battlefield, then in the hearts and minds of many
young people worldwide who now see America as "foreign
occupiers" and "oppressors" trying to rule with the
world with the facade of Democracy but the reality of
empire. We have become to approximately one-third of
the world's population the spit of the earth.

In Pakistan alone, with our predator drone strikes, we
have created more "militants" (or "terrorists"
depending upon the locale) than we have eliminated.
These drone attacks began in Pakistan began in 2004.
The New America Foundation reports that there have
been 199 drone attacks in northwest Pakistan with 103
of them coming in 2010 alone. Hundreds of innocent
Pakistani civilians have been killed in these attacks.
Pakistani authorities report that in 2009 alone 708
innocent civilians were killed in 44 drone attacks
with only five of these strikes hitting al Qaeda or
Taliban "terrorists," meaning that 140 innocent
Pakistanis had to die in order for us to kill one
terrorist. Is there any wonder why we are so hated in
the tribal regions that protect Osama bin Laden and
his terrorist cohorts?

And hanging over all these innocent lives lost, and
the loss of "good will" among Pakistanis for Americans
they have produced, is the symbolic case of Dr. Aafia
Siddiqui. This one woman, who many believe has been
driven into the darkest depths of mental illness at
the hands of American torturers, now looms as a dark
cloud over every American and Pakistani relation. We
will never truly have any semblance of trust with the
Pakistani people again so long as we keep the "Gray
Lady of Bagram", who has become a national icon in her
country, incarcerated in an American prison labeled a
"threat" to our national security.

As a gesture of good will, our Government should find
a way to send Dr. Siddiqui home to be with her people,
her family and her surviving children. If our
Government can swap 10 "sleeper" Russian agents for
four Americans held in Russian prisons as it did this
past summer, then it can certainly return Dr. Siddiqui
to her native Pakistan.

The bottom line is this: Dr. Siddiqui has not killed a
single American. We have killed thousands of innocent
Pakistanis trying to kill al Qaeda terrorists and
Taliban insurgents who pose no legitimate threat to
Americans as they sit in the rugged mountains of
northwest Pakistan. The political damage caused to the
Pakistani government and the loss of international
goodwill to our country is simply not worth keeping
Dr. Siddiqui in an American prison for the rest of her
natural life.